Ep 116 Haley Woodward and Colby Brinkman

This week I’ve got Haley Woodward and Colby Brinkman out of Austin Texas. To get a good idea of each of their forging skills have a look at each of their websites, www.Haleywoodward.com and www.metalmantis.com . We had a great conversation about the each of their blacksmithing backgrounds, the Austin Forging Competition they started, which by the way is coming up on April 21st and let me announce the competitors that will be there this year; Monica Coyne, John Rais and Steven Yusko, The Vasquez Brothers, Mike Rossi and Daniel Beck, JR Lodico, Jim Masterson and Logan Hirsh (2017 winners), Meagan Crowley and Elizabeth Brim, James Viste and Brad Nichols. Anyway, Haley and Colby talk about the infamous bus ride to Mexico and about their duo demo at the CBA Spring Conference.

And that brings us to our sponsor for today’s episode and that’s the 2018 CBA Spring Conference organizers.

To register, head over to www.calsmith.org and click on the events tab for the online registration button.

What We Talked About

While Haley was in college when he took a sculpture class with a metal working component, after making several welded sculptures he searched for a blacksmithing college program to further his metal working skills. He found that Austin Community College offered a few blacksmith classes and moved to Austin for enrollment.

Haley and Colby met on a college field trip to Mexico, actually a 37-hour bus ride to Santa Clara Del Cobre, Mexico for a 3-week copper smithing course.

Colby’s background also started with taking classes at the Austin Community College in 1995.

Colby spent 2 years in Europe as a blacksmith apprentice, specifically with Joseph Muck in the Czech Republic, Sebastian Fisher in Spain and Claudio Bottero in Italy.

Haley and Colby talk about how the Austin Metal Authority started, basically because they needed a name for a studio tour they participated in.

The Austin Forging Competition is an annual event that Haley and Colby started in their Austin Metal Authority shop, they talk about how it has now moved to the Mobile Loaves Community site and has about 1000 attendees.